Art show!

For the first time ever, I’ve made pieces of art (or at least craft) that are going to be in an art show! To be fair, the show is taking place in the gallery of my library, and it’s a showcase of librarians’ art. I think there are only a few people participating, despite my library being such a hotbed of creative endeavor. … Something about that phrasing sounds sarcastic, and I guess the overstatement is, but it’s also partially serious: there are some really talented artists and crafters in my workplace! More talented people than there are people participating in the show, too, for some reason, which I sort of don’t understand. I was so excited that I made two pieces, but I guess some people were too shy or too worried about their handiwork being damaged. I admit, it was with some concern that I handed off my properly-framed—that is, framed without glass—cross stitch. I’m worried about people touching them and messing them up, or knocking them off the walls and breaking the frames. But, nervous though I am, I’m much more excited about participating in an art show! And about the outreach opportunity that comes with showing another side of the librarians working here: “Look! We do stuff besides sit at these desks! We’re real people with interests besides ‘books’ and ‘information.'” I mean, how cool is that?

First is the one I simply titled “QR Code.”

With a smart phone and an application like QuickMark (or any other QR Code reader) you should be able to take a picture of this cross stitch and have it decode into some text. Many QR Codes turn into web addresses or text messages. This will bring up a quote I like. Enjoy!

Second is “The Pirate Queen.”

Anne Bonney was one of the fiercest pirates ever to have sailed the Caribbean. Her husband, “Calico” Jack Rackham, was the captain of the Vanity and sailed under a flag showing a skull and crossed daggers; however, he remains famous more because of his wife and another female pirate, Mary Reed, than because of his own exploits. When the ship and all its crew were captured by the British Navy and she was allowed to visit him in his cell, she was not comforting; instead, she told him, rather coldly, “Had you fought like a man, you need not have been hang’d like a dog.” He was executed the following day. There is no record of her execution, so it is possible that she escaped.

It seemed to me that Rackham’s flag could use some modification: Anne deserved a flag at least as much as Jack did.